Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The hospital in Grand Goave

Greetings friends and family members.

Life is going by busy as usual here at Haiti Arise. The team currently here from Saskatoon are preparing to leave tomorrow morning after an eventful time. They worked hard at the construction projects, did a great job with the children's VBS, and really just came with a great heart to serve.

I (Chris) have not been feeling well these days, and after waiting for my body to get better I finally gave in and went to the hospital (Becca may have had some influence there :). I would like to share with you about my visit there yesterday. A friend of ours put me on the waiting list at about 7:30am. We went to the hospital at about 8:30 am and continued to wait for an hour or so. It is funny there does seem to be a system of first come first serve but also a system of if I can get in the doctors office first I win. So after waiting for a good while, we simply waited by the doctor's door and were the first to enter after a patient had left :). The doctor wanted me to get some x-rays done, so we found ourselves waiting at another door. Again we just had to be the first to step into the room when the door opened to get the x-ray. Don't worry I waited a good amount of time before doing this. After getting the results back we had to again be the first in the doctors door, this time 2 other people did the same move, so it was a little crowded :). I have a throat infection and an infection in my lungs so he wrote my prescription and off we went.

First we went to one building to exchange my US currency and then proceeded to walk around for about 45 minutes to various 'pharmacies' of various sizes. By the time we were finished it was noon and I had most of the medicine accounted for, and actually on the walk back to Haiti Arise we discovered another pharmacy and picked up the remaining items. This whole experience has again made me so thankful for the health system we have in Canada, I know its not like it used to be, but its much better than here in Haiti.

All the doctors were Cuban, the Cuban government has an agreement with the Haitian one. Despite the crowds, and waits, it was a great experience treated by experts in their field. The hospital visit did not cost me a penny (I'm not sure who carries that cost), and the medicine was about $35 US. All in all it was a good visit and a very educational experience. Please pray that this medicine will help put me back to good health. Also continue to keep the elections in your prayers as they will coming shortly (I think March 20th). So never a dull day here, no matter what we do.

Thanks for reading, Chris

2 comments:

  1. Hope you feel better soon, Mr. Girvan!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Becca,
    Hope to see and Chris in June in our church in Vacaville. We are working out the details. On the picture it looks like the teeter tooter is broken. Did it break already. It looks like the screws broke that were attached to the posts. I can be reached at bbrigham@hotmail.com.
    Blessings, Bob

    ReplyDelete